A Certain Kind of Stubbornness
by starcrosslane
Summary: Regardless of whether you're Forehead of Security or The Guy in the Chair, it isn't easy when your best friend's a superhero.


There was something different about being a superhero's right-hand man. Happy knew it in his gut. It bred a certain kind of protective loyalty that didn't spring from anything less than looking after someone the rest of the world was out to get on a regular basis. A fierce doubtfulness about the motives of anyone who so much as looked sideways at them. A withering dislike of anyone who stood in the way of protecting them. A lack of trust in anyone but yourself.

Happy knew it because he'd been nursing those traits himself for the last couple of decades, honing that stubbornness and tenacity to a fine point.

But now, for once, his own tools of the trade were being turned right back on him.

Ned Leeds stood rooted in the back corner of Midtown High's shop class, decked out in a nerdy t-shirt that looked like it might be a twin to the one of the collection Peter wore so often, a jaunty hat so ridiculous that it looked like it might have been worn for moral support alone, and a stubborn frown that might have bordered on worried if the kid wasn't trying so hard to look stern.

"I thought Peter was coming to get it."

"Peter's in the car, he's...not feeling too hot." The kid was currently stretched out in Happy's backseat, trying to ignore the fact that he'd nearly gotten his leg blown off and stewing over the fact that said leg was still too sore to walk on for any real distance. "Just give me the thing, and I can get him upstate to get looked over."

It felt ridiculous, coordinating a covert hand-off with a kid, but there was nothing for it today with the _other_ kid indisposed and a key piece of evidence tucked away in this one's care. The medical alarms in Peter's suit had gone off an hour beforehand, prompting a speedy rescue mission to Queens for Happy since Tony was currently halfway around the world for a meeting in London and none of the Iron suits were very well-equipped for medical transport.

Happy had found Peter limping down an alley, his suit tattered and his leg half-covered with an angry red burn from a little run-in with one of the few Toomes-manufactured weapons still floating around the city, and bundled him into the car to deliver him to the waiting Medbay. Finding him in one piece and with enough fight in him to protest as Happy marched him to the Audi had been a relief. What had _not_ been a relief was his sheepish admission that not only had he been tracking the owner of this particular tech for a few days, but that he'd nicked a piece of it during their last encounter. And that it was currently in the possession of his sidekick for safekeeping.

"Uh...I'd still rather give it to Peter." If Happy didn't know better, he'd call that niggling undercurrent in the boy's voice suspicion. Happy pursed his lips and pinned Ned with a look that brooked no argument. He didn't have time to negotiate terms with a teenager. Peter was in stable condition—they wouldn't have made the stop to grab the tech if he wasn't—but the more time he spent sitting in the car with an untreated wound, the more uneasy Happy became.

"Peter's busy." Happy held out an impatient hand, already scanning the area in case he needed to scour the place by hand for the item in question. "That's why I'm here. Give me the item, and we'll get this show on the road."

Ned opened his mouth to retort, his jaw wobbling a little under the weight of Happy's glare.

"Not...not until I get an okay from Peter."

Happy reined in the mounting frustration in his chest and blew out a sigh. He _could _have simply called Peter and gotten him to call off his own security force by phone, but he knew for a fact that Tony was already tying up the line with a lecture that was sure to last for some time. The call had come in right about the time Happy had pulled into the school's parking lot and—judging by the way Peter's face had paled when he picked up—Tony had a fair amount of opinions on him biting off more than he could chew without so much as a distress call.

"Look, kid—_Ned_—we're kind of on a schedule here, so just give me the thing so we can get Peter some help and—"

"Why does that matter? It's not like Peter's the priority for you guys anyway."

Happy pulled up short, the air knocked out of his sails before he could even finish his demands. "Excuse me?"

Ned's chin came up, a slow burn Happy hadn't seen before simmering behind his eyes. "Well, you didn't care enough to even _answer his phone calls_ last time this happened! Why's this any different?"

Happy floundered, immediately wishing he'd just walked the kid out to the parking lot to see Peter with his own two eyes rather than arguing the point just to shave a few minutes off their high school detour. Then again, how could he have predicted this?

When it came down to it, he knew very little about Ned Leeds. It took a good month and a half after the disastrous events of Moving Day for him to even keep his name straight amongst the barrage of chatter Peter released every time he set foot in the car. He'd only encountered him briefly, on the very occasional stops by Peter's apartment to return forgotten homework or in passing when he retrieved Peter from school or from his academic whatever for internship days. With Peter around, Ned always seemed to be smiling. Bright and open and perhaps the only person Happy had ever laid eyes on who could give Peter a run for his money when it came to radiating inhuman levels of cheerfulness.

The difference, however, when Peter was not around— having slipped away to grab his backpack or for a quick restroom run before the long ride upstate—was stunning. Ned clammed up in what Happy suspected was his best stab at "surly," even if it really only came across as mild disinterest. If Happy hadn't been in the business of people-watching, he might not have picked up on it, but to someone who spent so much of his time reading the room and the people within it, that odd flick of the personality switch stood out like a beacon.

Peter had winced when Happy brought it up. Hemmed and hawed and skirted around the subject as long as he could before Happy called him on it.

"Ned's..." Peter paused as he scrambled for the right words. "Ned's not your biggest fan."

"Why?" Happy demanded, wondering when exactly his life had come to the point of picking up teenage detractors. "What'd I ever do to him?"

"Hung up on him on Homecoming night."

"Oh." Well, that explained that. To be honest, Happy had forgotten that it had been one of Peter's little friends who called him mid-move. He still carried more than a few twinges of guilt for ignoring Peter on that one, but he'd never had any reason to consider the friend…

"He's just protective." Peter had rushed to assure him, although the uneasy tilt of his smile said otherwise. "I explained that we're cool now and everything—he'll get it over it."

At the time, Happy had written the whole conversation off as an unfortunate stretch of water under the bridge. It wasn't ideal, and he certainly wasn't proud of it in retrospect, but there was little he could do about it now. Nor did he expect there to be any reason why he would ever _need_ to be on his boss's intern's best friend's good side.

Now, Happy sighed. When did he ever get what he expected?

"Last time was a misunderstanding, not a—"

"You know, he almost died," Ned said with a faint tremor in his voice. "Like literally actually _died_. We spent like an hour googling first aid videos when he got back from the plane crash because he was all beat up and bloody and everything."

Happy had _not_ known that. Communication had improved since that night, there was no doubt on that, but he hadn't braved any conversations about it yet. Tony might have, given how much time he spent with Peter these days, but Happy knew nothing that hadn't been plainly visible in the flaming wreckage or written on the thoughtful little note Peter had left behind. Perhaps he should. His brow puckered as he opened his mouth to press the issue further, but Ned was just picking up steam.

"And I know that's just what happens when you're a superhero. It's part of the job, and if I'm going to be the guy in the chair—"

"The _what_?"

"—then I just have to get used to it because that's what Peter needs, but…I just worry, you know? And it's a lot worse when he gets hurt when he didn't have to."

"Kid, believe me—if I'd known, it would've been different, but—"

"Just don't do it again."

Happy felt himself wilt a little in the face of a kid who seemed simultaneously so mad he might cry and so worried he might break.

"Not planning on it."

"Good. 'Cause if you did, I'd have to ruin your life." At Happy's baffled look, Ned mumbled his clarification, deflating a bit at his threat's lack of impact. "With hacking. Like your bank account and your computers and stuff. It's my thing."

Happy blinked, not quite sure how to take that. The intended menace of the line made his security officer hackles rise, but to be fair, he did earn the threat. And this was a friend of Peter's. _That _kid didn't have a corrupt bone in his body, so Happy doubted a friend he'd held on to since kindergarten would be much worse.

"You ever actually done any life-ruining?"

Ned hesitated. Shuffled his hands along the straps of his backpack in embarrassed reluctance.

"Well...no. But I _could_." The rest of it came in a whisper, nearly under his breath. "It's what the TV guys always say."

"People get arrested for that kind of threat, you know," Happy said mildly, more interested in what the response would be than in actually following through.

Ned gulped, but the stubborn line of his brow didn't waver. "Peter's worth it."

Happy let out a low hum of agreement. It wasn't a point that could be argued. As much as he'd fought it in the beginning, there was no refuting the fact that to know the kid—to _really _know him, with his endless chatter and selfless nature and golden retriever-esque loyalty—was to like him. And to worry about him, evidently.

Happy fished in his pockets and came up with a slightly crumpled business card to push into Ned's hands. It felt like a mistake even as he handed it over, but the same gut feeling that connected him to Tony and Peter and the others pushed him into the choice now. It knew a kindred spirit when it saw one. He pointed a stern finger in the kid's rather awed face before he released his grip on the card.

"If you need to call me again, there you go. Direct line. But it's for emergencies and emergencies only, you hear me?"

"Yessir, Mr. Happy."

"I get a call from you, there better be another plane fallin' out of the sky. Capisce?"

"Uh-huh," Ned muttered, his eyes never leaving the card.

"No 'reports'—I already get those from the other kid—no little chats—_emergencies_. Nothing else."

"For sure, for sure—I can do that." Ned nodded like a bobblehead until Happy held out an expectant hand again. He stilled, brow creasing with a hint of that familiar stubbornness for an instant before he shucked his backpack to dig around for what appeared to be a repurposed Tupperware container. Happy frowned, turning it gingerly in his hands for inspection.

"_That's_ how you guys store potentially volatile tech?"

Ned shrugged. "At least we used bubble wrap this time. It shouldn't slide around too much, so you should be good for transport."

Happy opened his mouth with a stinging retort, but snapped it closed again at the kid's expression. Diplomacy. Diplomacy was key here if he wanted to avoid any future hiccups like this.

"Thanks for keeping an eye on it." He gave a sharp nod as he started to move for the door. "Peter'll be calling you later."

"Just like, for clarification, what are you classifying as real emergencies?" Ned piped up before he could escape. "Besides planes, obviously, 'cause like what are the chances of that happening again? But Peter's always getting into crazy stuff, so if it's not that, it'll just be something else and—"

"You'll know it when you see it," Happy called over his shoulder, tamping down an incredulous snort as he shut out the chatter with a sharp pull of the door. If he'd thought Peter talked a lot, Ned could set records. But he couldn't quite find it in himself to be irritated about it. There might be only one teenager on the planet he could bring himself to like so far...but perhaps there was one more he could respect. At least a _little._

"What took so long? Is he okay? What'd he say? What'd _you_ say?" Peter pounced on the divider between seats, nearly hanging over Happy's shoulder in his eagerness to snoop the moment Happy returned to the car. Happy batted him back into the backseat with a barked order to put his seatbelt on and stay off his bad leg. Clearly whatever Tony had said to him hadn't been too harsh; the kid seemed no more chagrined than he had been when Happy left.

"None of your business."

Peter sputtered, eyes narrowing in what Happy knew from experience to be a precursor to a very persistent attempt to dig into whatever Happy told him not to. Happy cut him off neatly with a hard look in the rearview and a gruff inquiry.

"So... were you ever gonna mention Toomes beating the snot out of you?"

Peter froze, wide-eyed and gaping as the color leeched out of his face. "Uhhh..."

Happy waited and watched with sharp eyes as the kid scrambled for excuses that he would just have to sift through until he got some semblance of the truth. It was a bit of a moot point now, with the Vulture and the destroyed plane nearly three months in the past now, but...Happy wanted to know. He was nosy that way. And if Peter was trusting knowledge related to his safety to some fifteen-year-old kid, Happy sure as hell needed to know, too. He'd been entrusted with insuring that safety; he wasn't going to let some high school student do a better job of it than he did.

When the calls from Ned inevitably came, Happy answered them. There weren't many of them scattered among the dozens of communications Happy fielded every day, but they still cropped up once a month or so, always marked by the tiny priority contact star on his phone's screen. As he expected, some were the true emergencies he had described. And some...were not.

"You gotta go pick up Peter."

"What? Why?"

"He ran out of webfluid."

"Why isn't _he_ calling me?" Happy kept his tone irritated on principle, but privately found it a relief that at least one of them was calling. As time passed, they were all getting better with the whole teamwork thing, but Peter's independent streak still flared up on occasion. Often on the occasions when calling for a little help would've been the most beneficial. Happy gritted his teeth, but held his tongue. It was a work in progress.

"I'm the Guy in the Chair! Handling details while he's working is my whole job description." There was a pause on the other end of the line. "And also, he's embarrassed. Like insisting-he'll-ride-the-subway-in-his-Spidey-suit-rather-than-call-you embarrassed. So I made an executive decision."

"Gimme his location," Happy sighed. Teenagers...Tony didn't pay him enough to manage the sort of shenanigans they manufactured. Still, there were worse jobs. And worse…colleagues, if that's what the idiots—plural, since there seemed to be no Peter without Ned, much as there was no Tony without Happy—under his supervision could be called. He would get used to it, just as he'd gotten used to everything else. He was stubborn that way. And he couldn't help being a little grateful that he wasn't the only one who was.

_**AN: During FFH, Ned seemed to know Happy a lot better than he did during Homecoming, which naturally got me to thinking about what might've happened in the interim. And since there's a lot to think about when it comes to those two and their parallel jobs and friendships and all, here we are!**_

_**As always, thanks for reading! Your comments make my day!**_


End file.
